


Dreams Hurt More Than Nightmares

by Nebou



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, This is my attempt at fluff, au where hilbert's family didn't die because the volograd meltdown never happened, so instead of becoming anti villain molecular biologist he becomes a vet, veterinarian!hilbert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 19:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10473036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebou/pseuds/Nebou
Summary: just a quick veterinarian!Hilbert fic





	

“I think its leg is hurt.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, look, it holding it weirdly straight.”

Olga considers this, then nods her head slowly, appreciatively. “Yeah, poor thing,” then, as if she had been struck by lightning, she gasps. “Mitya!  _ We _ could help her!”

Dmitri does his best to level her with a blank stare. It takes effort. Her enthusiasm is contagious, he finds. 

“What, exactly, do you think we could do?”

Olga edges towards the cat on her knees. It chirps quietly, but does not raise it’s hair or hiss. Dmitri suspects that it means it must not be in pain, but stays his distance, crouched in the shadow of the apartment building. 

“I dunno, get her food? Shelter? That sort of thing, she seems friendly enough, I don’t think she would mind,” she lifts a loose palm towards the cat, in front of it’s nose. The cat sniffs it, glancing its nose off her fingertip once or twice. It doesn’t move to spit or scratch, so Olga carefully runs her fingertips under the cat’s chin, itching the short hairs there until it closes its eyes before she continues. “I’m sure it’s not that hard.”

“I’m sure you are no authority on pet care to make that kinda statement,” Dmitri says smartly, and this time it’s Olga’s turn to level Dmitri with a blank stare. 

Dmitri, though, has never been one for saying no to his older sister Olga, and it doesn’t take much convincing and pleading on her part to get him on board with the idea. Eventually, they’re back inside the apartment, raiding the linen and pantry closet while consulting a book on pet care they had found at the library. 

Dmitri has to stand on his tippy toes to reach the small, pink baby blanket, while Olga precariously juggles the book, a cardboard box, and a saucer in her arms. When they hear their mother approach, Olga all but throws the allotted materials into the small closet, hitting Dmitri in the shin with the corner of the book. Dmitri doesn’t yelp but it’s a close thing, he fixes a plastic smile on his face and does his best to shield the evidence with his thin body, standing shoulder to shoulder with an equally nervous looking Olga. 

Their mother looks almost impressed, but Dmitri can tell she’s probably already divined their scheme, and is desperately trying to formulate as many many excuses and pleas as he can. It doesn’t come to that, thankfully, because older brother Ivan calls for mother’s attention before she can even tell them she’s seen through them. When she’s walked off out of sight, Olga and Dmitri return to their task with newfound vigor and urgency. When they show up again in the shadow behind their apartment building, the cat is still there, and eagerly laps at the milk and leftover meat they feed it. 

Olga offers for Dmitri to have a turn feeding it, and so he does, letting it eat out of his hands while he tries not to wince when it’s teeth graze the pads of his fingers. 

“You’re a natural, I bet you’d be a amazing veterinarian, Mitya.” Dmitri doesn’t respond, but the comment makes him happy, and he can’t help the slow grin that spreads across his face. 

They spend just under two months caring for the cat before, one day, it disappears without any warning. Olga cries, and when she cries, Dmitri cries too. 

 

“You could be a doctor.”

Dmitri doesn’t like that idea. Not that he doesn’t think he could do it, not at all, but the thought doesn’t sit well with him. He doesn’t say that though. Instead, he says “perhaps.” His mother thumbs the corner of the recipe card, before placing it back in the wooden box and continuing her search for dinner. 

“Didn't you say you wanted to be a scientist before? I’m sure that pays well.” Dmitri represses and eye roll, and leans back in the dining chair, the old wood creaking under him despite his slight weight.

“When I was nine.”

His mother lets out a soft bark of laughter, not looking up from her box of recipes. “Nine, sixteen, what’s the difference. You’ve always had a mind for the sciences, Mitya, and you’re so smart, it’d be such a waste to let go to no use.” She glances up at him over the box, and he stops shifting uncomfortably in the hard chair. She closes the box and pushes it aside, so only the worn table is between them. “Mitya, I only want you to have a good life, you know that,” she then gives him that look that only mother’s can give that says _I love you and want you to be happy but you need to listen to me write now because I know what I’m talking about more than you_. “Being a lawyer, a doctor, scientist, those jobs pay well. You’re my _zvyozdochka_ , I just want to see you happy.”

Dmitri looks as his mother and considers becoming a scientist, a doctor. The concept to him feels… exciting, but in the back of his head, something stirs. Another, darker, more obscure part of him tells him to be wary, that there will be danger involved, to be ready, to be prepared.  He doesn’t say that though.  Instead, he says “I want to be a veterinarian.”

His mother gives him the look again. 

“I’m not saying it will be… profitable… but it will be rewarding. I will be content and happy with just that.” His glasses slip a little on the bridge of his nose, and he pushes them back up. “Besides… who knows? I could always end up creating famous cure for pets, no?”

There’s a moment of silence between them before his mother sighs and reaches back for the recipe box, the wood scraping on the table as slides it back in front of her.

“You could be great doctor, Mitya, it’s a shame to waste your genius on mere animals.”

 

It was winter in Moscow when Dmitri finally opened his veterinary clinic. The outside looked plain and the inside looked plain but he had no intention of sprucing it up. Sophia, Dmitri’s new receptionist, took it upon herself to bring in some potted plants and settle them at her desk, making the otherwise bleak reception room, previously outfitted with only chairs and a water cooler, a bit more cozy. Everything looked and felt simple, but it filled Dmitri with a sense of pride and accomplishment. 

His first patient was a dog with a broken leg.

The woman who brought him in didn’t own him and was in quite the panic when she barged into the clinic. After a minute of talking with her and assessing the dog, Dmitri could tell she never had pets before, but he was impressed by her conviction to care for the injured animal. 

His second patient was a bird and Dmitri realized he would need to buy more equipment. 

By the summer, his clinic was impressively booked and Dmitri wasn’t coy to admit that it was because he’s a good doctor. Olga agreed with him on this. After work, she picked him up and drove them home to their shared apartment, where they would discuss his day and her day and eat warm soups and meats before Olga would drag Dmitri to the couch to watch crappy American sitcoms with a blanket draped over their legs. After Olga passed out(as she was prone to) Dmitri would tuck her in a few more blankets before finishing up paperwork on one of the new cat clients or reviewing electricity bills over a bowl of cereal and then finally retiring to his bed. 

Occasionally, Olga would surprise Dmitri at work and take him out for lunch. He thought that was a waste of money though, and often said so. Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to say no, and enjoyed the time with his older sister anyway. 

Things were nice. Things were great, actually. 

 

Dmitri closes the clinic at 5pm on Tuesdays. The chimes on the door jingle as Mikhail leaves, leaving Dmitri and Sophia behind the front desk; the latter finishing up a phone call while Dmitri goes through Mikhail's notes on their previous patient, red pen moving quickly across the paper. He barely registers the sound of Sophia finishing up the call and gathering her things, instead focused on Mikhail's outlandish conclusion on how the dog’s skin condition formed. Red ink fills the page slowly before Dmitri hears the sounds of knuckles rapping against the steel desk softly. He looks up at Sophia.

“I’m heading out, Dr. Volodin, if you don’t need me for anything else?” She jerks a thumb towards the front door.”

“No, that will be all.” He mildly watches her circle around the front desk and open the front door, chimes jingling, and returns her wave goodbye before she’s beyond the glass. Dmitri returns to work, writing in red letters about how Mikhail should wait for the bacterial report to come back before making baseless assumptions. His words are curt, but Dmitri often finds that being honest and getting straight to the point is the best teaching method. The chimes jingle but he doesn’t look to see who it is, probably Sophia forgot something here, or Mikhail forgot to give Dmitri something, or maybe even a panicked patient. 

Dmitri nearly jumps out of his skin, though, when nails quickly tickle up the side of his neck.

Spinning around, clasping the sensitive skin of his neck, he finds Olga throwing her head back and laughing, clutching her stomach and, if Dmitri knows her as well as he thinks he does, just barely keeping herself from pulling him into a suffocating hug. 

“Oh, wow, you should’ve seen yourself! You jumped damn near out of your chair!” Her dark blonde hair quivered at her sides, shaking with the weight of her laughter. Dmitri pulled his most grumpy face, but that only seemed to make his older sister laugh harder. “Oh you’re so cute, Mitya!”

“You’re early, and I disagree.”

“Are too.”

“Are not.”

“You wanna bet?”

“ _ Olya _ .”

She hummed in amusement. “Alright, alright, I’ll concede defeat- for now. Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and see how my precious baby brother was holding up.” She looked him up and down. There was still dog hair on him from his previous patient that he had yet to take care of(courtesy of Mikhail misplacing the hair roller) and his own hair was likely dishevelled as it always was. 

“I am doing fine, just finishing up work before I lock up.”

“And after?”

Dmitri considered his response. “...Research? Did you have plans?”

Olga shook her head. “No, what about the rest of this week?”

The chair creaked as he leaned back, hand on his chin, regarding Olga curiously. “Nothing- aside from work here at the clinic. Did you have plans for us-” 

She shook her head again as she interrupted him, “you’re not meeting up with friends or anything?”

Dmitri frowned and crossed his arms, knowing where this was going. The light from the sunset outside cloaked most his clinic in warmth, stopping at Olga’s feet, just short of where he was sitting. Olga pulled the chair from Mikhail's desk, slumping in it. They’ve had this conversation before. It’ll start with Olga telling him he needs friends, then Dmitri would counter with something about focusing on work, then Olga would get worried of him overworking himself like he did once or thrice at university, then she’ll get derailed and end up taking him out to get ice cream or watch a nonsense movie or just anything where she can see and make sure he isn’t working himself into the ground. 

He’s not expecting it when Olga asks him “are you seeing anyone?”

It catches him off guard. “...No, I just told you-”

“No, I mean like are you dating anyone? Interested, even?” His eyes widen and he feels the creases form on his forehead as his eyebrows raise.

“What? No! Olya, do not be ridiculous.” He can’t help it if his voice is tinged with a bit of defensiveness.

She leans forward in her chair, giving him that look that means  _ I love you and it is because I love you that I’m bringing this up _ . Dmitri hates that look. 

“Mitya, you’re thirty, I’m not trying to rush you but-”

“No. I am not participating in this conversation.” He swivels his chair around, picking his red pen back up from where he had dropped it and shuffling papers uselessly around his desk. He hears Olga roll her chair up beside him, but he refuses to make eye contact. She rests a hand on his shoulder, and part of him wants to shrug it off, but a another, louder part is grateful for the comfort. 

Despite his obvious discomfort, Olga continues, “I mean, you’re not terrible looking for your age,” a glance towards his unkempt hair, “and you can be kind, when you want to,” another towards the red marked page in front of him, “you just have to put yourself out there!”

He let out a disgruntled huff. “I am fine where I am, thank you.” Dmitri wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her gaze on him. 

“Maybe right now… but what about later? The clock’s ticking Mitya, you won’t live forever.”

Agitated, Dmitri finally turned towards Olga,  meeting her challenging gaze. “I already have a family, in case you have forgotten” he nudges her side softly with his elbow, making her lips thin. The room feels fuzzy, and not quite there. Hilbert notices that he can’t quite make out the features on Olga’s face, but from what little he can identify, it seems too young and sickly for a grown woman. 

After a moment of comfortable silence, Olga speaks.

“You know, I think you’d make a great father.” She squeezes his shoulder, and for a moment he considers, ignoring her words but taking the sympathy while he still can. “I mean, just look at how dedicated you are to your work!” She gestures to the papers, but Hilbert doesn’t want to see them and squeezes his eyes shut, focusing on the warmth of her hand on his shoulder. “It can save so many,  _ solnyshko _ ” Hilbert can’t see but he can tell the sunset is gone, the chimes are gone, and soon, Olga. The warmth is seeping from the room but he doesn’t want it to. 

“Oh, poor baby brother, if only you could have a family.”

 

Hilbert wakes suddenly, his fingers twitching and his eyelids fluttering. He can see the red dwarf out of the corner of his eye from the observation window, and the AI’s camera focused on him from the corner by the door. The shackles around his wrists dig painfully into the now raw flesh of his wrists, the red abrasions peeking out from behind the metal. He’s as close to seated in the corner of the room as zero gravity will allow, but he knows it will be of little help if Lovelace or Minkowski decide to do something with him. Still, it makes him feel prepared, and he’ll take solace in whatever simple matters he can. 

He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t feel bad. It was just a dream, and scientists do not cry like little babies after dreams, so Hilbert does not. Instead, he takes whatever the dream pulled up, the sadness, the anger, the loneliness, and shoves it deep, deep down. Deep enough that he won’t see it again. Deep enough that he won't think about it. He doesn’t think about it, and stares outside the observation window and counts down the time in his head until Eiffel will need his help. Thinks about what Command intends to do with him and the the new door. Thinks about how Lovelace shouldn’t be here. Thinks about when Minkowski will realized she needs his help. Thinks about all these things but definitely not  _ that _ , anything but that. 

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to fluff but then i remembered happiness is too ooc for hilbert


End file.
